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Childhood Quotes


"A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants."


"I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me."


"And I was lucky enough to have teachers that really, really looked out for me and really encouraged all that. And in rural Louisiana, that was a rare thing back then."


"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."


"My childhood wasn't full of wonderful culinary memories."


"The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes."


"There's something about childhood friends that you just can't replace."


"Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up."


"Doctor Who was a big part of my childhood so it was a great honour to be in it."


"For almost thirty years I repeatedly saw one and the same dream: I would arrive in Vienna at long last. I would feel really happy, for I was returning to my serene childhood."


"I always wrote; my first story was published in the magazine The American Girl when I was 11."


"If we are to use the words 'childish' and 'infantile' as terms of disapproval, we must make sure that they refer only to those characteristics of childhood which we become better and happier by outgrowing. Who in his sense would not keep, if he could, that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that facility of suspending disbelief, that unspoiled appetite, that readiness to wonder, to pity, and to admire?"


"I wanted to have a normal childhood. Normal relationships."


"My childhood is completely... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way."


"When she was little, she'd liked to pretend that stars were really lights anchoring distant islands, as if she wasn't looking up but only out across a dark sea. She knew the truth now but still found stars comforting, especially in their sameness. A sky full of burning replicas."


"Our culture sentimentalizes children, and we forget one of the things that we should most remember from that time of our lives: Children know that this world can be hard on them, harder than it is on adults. They are physically weaker than adults, financially dependent, and in times of danger, nothing clarifies our thinking more than an awareness of our extreme vulnerability."


"We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon."


"Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special."


"When I make a book, I make it for the child and not for the parent - no jokes in it for the parents!"


"I was an escapee of childhood. I always wanted to grow up."


"It's never too late to have a happy childhood."



"It is always tedious when someone tells you that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much."


"The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence."


"One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep."


"One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around."


"I was always very strong in math, physics and calculus."


"I remember one winter, when I was about five or six, I spent three days with another boy, tracking a bobcat that had been sighted in another county fifty miles away, but which I was sure had come into our neighborhood."


"It was a perfectly average well- adjusted childhood, not a bit unlike that of millions of other individuals."


"My boyhood saw Greek islands floating over Harvard Square."


"Everyone has a childhood, everyone had awkward years and weird stages. Mine were broadcast for eight years."
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